


Trauma Bonding

by PsychicBananaSplit



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Adopted Children, Aftermath of Torture, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Amnesia, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Ben Hargreeves Deserves Better, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Ben Hargreeves is Alive, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Vanya Hargreeves, Bisexuality, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Horror, Car Accidents, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Claustrophobia, Dehydration, Drug Use, Dry Humping, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Love, Five is named Frank in this, Fluff and Angst, Forced Ejaculation, Forced Orgasm, Forced Prostitution, Foster Care, Good Brother Klaus Hargreeves, Good Sister Vanya Hargreeves, Grinding, Homelessness, Human Experimentation, Human Trafficking, I DONT MAKE THE RULES, Idiots in Love, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Internalized Misogyny, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Murder, Mutual Pining, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-Graphic Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Nyctophobia, Original Character(s), Overdose, Pansexual Character, Pansexual Klaus Hargreeves, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Running, Sexual Abuse, Smut, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Starvation, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Torture, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Trauma, Vanya Hargreeves Deserves Better, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Writing, cause there isnt enough of that, naming kids numbers, pansexual male character, pansexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-13 00:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18457931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicBananaSplit/pseuds/PsychicBananaSplit
Summary: Normal AU, where all of the kids are foster children and they all cope with their terrible experiences in their biological families with each other.





	1. Luther

**Author's Note:**

> i was gone. i'm running low on prompts, so, i need ideas. GIVE ME THE IDEAS PLEASE.  
> thank you.

Luther Hargreeves was raised by a single mom. She wanted a daughter. It was apparent. He would never see her without a degrading stare hurled at his way. If he dare say anything wrong at Thanksgiving, then she would brutally kick him under the table to get his mouth to shut up. 

At some point, she was so mad at him, that she kicked him until blood spewed out of his mouth every time there was a new strike. He passed out on the cold, wooden floor. When he came to, it was the middle of the night, it was dark, and Mother was gone. He was nine.

For the next few days he lived off of the remaining food in the fridge, and he would always leave his lights on in case his mother came back and started yelling again. Oh, her horrible, awful, shrill shriek of a voice when she screams at him. It was deafening. He never would want to hear it again, but as an innocent nine-year-old, he didn’t know the difference between a normal childhood and an abnormal one. A wrong upbringing.

By the time the neighbors realized that his mother’s car wasn’t there, it had been around three weeks. He spent his birthday alone with the stale mini-cakes from the box in the cabinet and the last of his juice boxes. The plumbing wasn’t being paid for. The electricity wasn’t, either. 

That night, the police came knocking at his door. He was scared, he didn’t know what to do.  _ My mommy isn’t a bad person! She’s gonna come back! I know she will!  _ Oh, how naive he was.

Turns out, his biological father died in prison. His grandparents were too sick. He didn’t have many friends, not ones that the authorities trusted enough to let them take him in. Luther stayed in the hospital for a while, he was underweight yet his blood sugar levels were up to the roof. There were needles and tubes everywhere on his body, and he freaked out when they had to put them back in. There was a nice detective that would visit him every once in a while. His name was-oh, what was it again-Detective Patch! Yes, Luther remembers him. He has a daughter that goes to his school.  _ Eudora Patch.  _ She gets really mad when people call her Dora, and start sing in the  _ Dora the Explorer  _ theme song around her. She has a mom, too.

No-one found his. 

 

There was a strange man at the glass door. He was tall, and thin, with graying hair and a top hat. He was wearing a monocle-at the time, Luther didn’t have the vocabulary for what it was. He was wearing a long, thick woolen coat. It’s on the cusp of winter, the end of fall. There’s frost on the windows and the grass outside. The man is wearing shiny, new-looking shoes and is holding a cane, curled at the top. 

“Hello, Luther.” The man walked in. His mustache curled with a terse smile, and he held out a gloved hand to the ten-year-old. The gloves were leather, slick and wrinkly against his hand. “My name is Reginald Hargreeves. I’m your new father.”

Luther looks at him cautiously. His eyes are cold, gray, deep pits of ice. His goatee is clean-shaven and cut neatly, his dark mahogany suit and top-hat make him look very professional. 

He looked past his eyes, drove away his past, and took the strange man’s hand. 

 

By the time he was ten, his hair was cut and styled every day by his mother. He never trusted her; she looked too much like his own, with meticulously placed blonde locks and her smiley face and her red lipstick. Though, she wasn’t as gaunt in the cheeks, and her eyes never had that cruel sheen to them that his own mother had. By the time he was ten he was having lessons in Astronomy and mechanics and boxing, defending himself. By the time he was ten, he was being sent fresh, steaming breakfast of juicy fruit and hot pancakes from the butler, Pogo, instead of stale Little Debbie cakes from the cabinet that he could barely reach, and small boxes of sugary juice that nowhere near satiated his thirst.

By the time he was ten, just one year later, he had a loving family to call his own for a change.

When he was eleven, there was another boy that Father had taken in from the vast variety of foster children. The boy, tan-skinned and dark-haired, stood awkwardly in the foyer with his tattered backpack and ratty outfit of a black button-up, torn black jeans and dirty black shoes. He was shrinking in on himself in front of Mother, Grace, his eyes down-turned as she introduced herself to him in her always-robotic fashion. 

“Hello, Diego, I’m Grace, your new mother. Would you like me to take your bag to your room?” The boy-Diego-glanced at her warily before giving her his bag and letting her float up the stairs in her red high-heels to do what she suggested. 

Father walked through the door, shutting it almost boastfully and slamming his gloved hand on Diego’s shoulders, who flinched so violently that he had to steady himself roughly, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet before balancing and being taken down the hallway towards the living room, where Luther was sitting, on-edge, on the couch.

“Luther, this is Diego. He is your brother. Treat him as such.” They stared at each other after the brief message was given, heatedly glaring at both eyes until the braver of the two said something:

“Hey there, man, I plan to get outta here as soon as possible, not to cause much trouble, so,” Diego muttered, not meeting eye-contact bashfully. “Stay away, don’t get too close, alright?” Luther tried to catch the slight accent, but failed before he stopped talking. He was distracted by the scar on the right side of his face. It stretched from the side of his head, leaving a clean hairless line, to the center of his cheek. It was an unnaturally pale line from his tanned skin, and much more so from the black hair. 

Luther tried his best to nod, still staring at the scar, and Diego walked away from the couch up the stairs to find his room without a guide. 

Luther can’t think of trying to get out of this place. Why would Diego possibly want to go away? It was perfect, to Luther. Even the unnerving mother and the strange father and the dark corners of the mansion he overlooked. 

So, from that day on, Luther and Diego tried to stay away from one another as much as possible, even though they were forced to sit by each other during meals, and forced to be taught English and Mathematics in the same room, and often had to work together in those skills. They tried to stay away from each other.

That is, when the other kids started filtering through.

Allison Lewis knew her last name. She was exotic, and strange, and liked the color green and loved her favorite pair of green roller-skates even more. Her hair was always a mess of brown-dyed-blonde curls, but she always refused to fix it. She would wear dresses and skirts often, but more pants and button-ups than one would expect. No matter how many times Pogo and Mom and Dad protested, Allison would skate down the hallways and slide down the staircase handrails and generally put herself in needless ‘danger’. 

To Luther, she was perfect, and beautiful, and everything that he wasn’t.

To Diego, she was probably competition. 

They fought more than Luther ever did with any of the other children that were soon to come. They yelled and pulled their hair and stomped their feet and threw things at one another, with Diego, it being more dangerous than Allison throwing anything at him. 

At some point, Allison tripped and fell down the stairs. Luther saw Diego standing up there and staring down in horror, and that instantly sent red signals through his head. 

Allison looked up at him and laughed so hard that he thought that her lungs would be thrown from her chest forcefully. Diego started to laugh as well. Luther wasn’t laughing.

“What the fuck, Diego?” He rushed towards her and picked her up. She gave him a look.

“We were playing around. It was an accident, Luth, really,” she rubbed his shoulder comfortingly. “There is no bad blood between Diego and I.” 

Luther still wasn’t convinced, but he nodded and glared at Diego, who glared back. He skirted away from them, flashing a dashing smile at Allison and going on his way, feeling the tingle of here Allison had touched him on his shoulder. He couldn’t place the fluttery feeling in his chest when that happened, the way his neck would grow hot and red when Allison talked to Diego, or the way that his cheeks burned when she talked to him. 

Klaus would make fun of him, smiling his cheeky smile and saying that he had a crush, that he was in  _ love.  _ Frank would look at him like he  _ knew  _ something, but he would crawl back into his room and make himself a hermit for the rest of the day, that queer stare shining bright in Luther’s mind. 

Little did he know, that his seemingly unrequited love was in fact reciprocated from Allison.

She approached him in the attic, where he was reading a book about the workings of an airplane, and tilted his face to press their lips together. 

Her lips were glassy and sticky from lip gloss, her eyelashes brushing delicately across his face. His eyes were open in shock, but when she pulled back in question, his eye-lids drooped as he moved his thumb in circles on her cheek and went in for another kiss. 

Allison was the first woman in his entire life that he felt safe with, and that he  _ should  _ feel safe with. They both would stay up late in the night in the attic, planning out their life together, going on dates and getting married, having children and growing old in a little cottage in the country, watching their children grow up and go to school and not have childhoods such as their own. 

He loved her, and she loved him back. And that’s all that mattered at the time. 


	2. Diego

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reginald Hargreeves isn’t like his dad, so he shouldn’t have this irrational fear that he’s going to throw a lamp at him wherever he goes. He shouldn’t need to look behind him ever step. He shouldn’t flinch when he touches his shoulder on the first day they met. He shouldn’t be afraid.   
> So why is he?

_ “Fuckin’ dyke!”  _ Diego’s father yelled, throwing a lamp at his sister. She had managed to grab a pair of scissors from the kitchen and cut her hair off, laying in shreds on the floor. Greasy brown clumps of a rat’s nest on the grimy bathroom tiles. 

Beer bottles littered the dusty carpet in the living room, the TV was always on static, and the windows were never cleaned. But it was  _ “home”,  _ at least, Diego thought. Most of the time, there wouldn’t even be healthy foods in the fridge, like fruits and vegetables, and Diego was taught in school that they had to be eaten every day by everyone. It was in the five most important food groups.

His dad got mean when Diego knew everything. Being a smartass, is what he called it.

His dad’s aim wasn’t too good. Him and Alex, his sister, were standing together on the edge of the white-turned-brown carpet, and it hit the two year-old. Eleven year-old Alex screamed when Diego fell, the lamp shattering against the right side of his head, his ear ringing and blood gushing out of a slice. 

A jagged cut lay as a reminder for that fateful day, the day that both Diego and Alex got out of their dirty, dark house and ran into the streets.

 

Diego was four. His sister, thirteen. He paced into the dank apartment cautiously, looking around for any other person, or animals. It was empty, the floors and the old-fashioned, eggshell wallpaper covered in black soot and grime. It didn’t seem very welcoming, and, to be frank, it almost looked like their childhood home. It was small, only two bedrooms, three windows and an area that was separated by a counter; the kitchen and the living room. It might’ve been a matchbox, but it was where they would have to stay for the next few weeks,  _ months  _ if they were lucky. 

Alex, with her still cropped-short hair, looked around, the feather-like cowlick bobbing behind her movements. She went over to a corner of the living room and opened her backpack, taking a blanket out. “Alright, Diego, we’ll be sleeping here for a while, okay?” She asked, propping a pillow at the end of the blanket and setting up another “bed” for herself. Diego nodded, and took out a water-bottle from the bag and drank little from it, careful to save it, like Alex taught him to. 

 

“Hey, Di?” Diego looked over at Alex, eighteen, her flannel torn and rumpled, bleeding from a gash in her arm. He was trying his best to wrap the bandages around the wound, but he knew that Alex would’ve done a better job.

“Yeah, Al?”

“Do you,” she paused, looking at him and taking a deep breath. “Do you know, what transgender is?” 

Diego scrunched his eyebrows, pausing his bandage-wrapping. “No. Why?”

Alex’s face turned slightly red. “Um, well, uh, transgender means that, like,” she huffed in frustration. “You know how you were born a boy?”

“Yeah?”

“And I was born a….girl?”

“.....Yeah?”

“And you feel like a boy, right?”

“Yeah!” Alex laughed at his affronted expression.

“Well, I do too, even though I was born a girl. Technically.” Diego nods, not quite understanding, not yet. Well, of course he doesn’t understand. He  _ shouldn’t  _ understand. 

“So, what, you’re a boy now?”

Alex clicked her, his? tongue. “I’ve always been a boy, Diego. But, yes, I am a boy.”

“So…..you’re a ‘he’ now?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool, cool.” He looked down at his hands, covered in blood and antiseptic and bandages that he couldn’t swaddle correctly. “Mind helping me, bro?”

Alex laughed for a little too long, tears burning in his eyes and trying to hug Diego as best as he could in the situation they were in right now. “Sure, yeah, I’ll help. Anything.”

 

He got caught.

Diego got spotted by the adoption agency a long time ago, but he ran away. And, now, he was in their hold. 

He was sitting in a room, tiny, but covered in bright colors. Sun-yellow walls, neon-green carpet, pink building blocks in a blue tub in the corner. Through the window, summer light shone. 

Alex was waiting for him in their apartment that they had had for nearly seven years. They ran from the cops together, got hurt together, got sick together. They always had one another.

And Diego isn’t sure he’s ready to let go of him yet. But, he knows that they would probably be split up in the system. Younger kids had a better chance of getting into a family.

So, he decided not to risk it.

There was a woman, white dress-shirt, black dress-pants, black shoes. Her red jacket was hanging on the chair. Her brown eyes gleamed with warmth. 

She asked him all sorts of questions. What his name was (he didn’t know his last name. He was two when he ran away, and Alex never told him), how old he was (turning twelve in a few months), if he had any siblings (no. He didn’t want to face having to get a new family while he knew that Alex was  _ gone.  _ He was an adult).

And he got whisked away into a car, to the place where a man was ready to take him in.

 

Reginald Hargreeves isn’t like his dad, so he shouldn’t have this irrational fear that he’s going to throw a lamp at him wherever he goes. He shouldn’t need to look behind him ever step. He shouldn’t flinch when he touches his shoulder on the first day they met. He shouldn’t be  _ afraid.  _

So why is he?

His fear is what makes him say that he isn’t going to stay for much longer to, Luther? Who the fuck is named Luther nowadays?

It’s true. He isn’t going to stay for long. He needs to get back to Alex.

He still wonders about Alex.

 

Allison Lewis is...somebody. 

She reminds Diego of someone, but he doesn’t know who. 

Young, scrappy and hungry, she is the most adventurous of the bunch that are already there (she is later replaced by Klaus), and she likes to mess around with his hair. She calls him nicknames, like Shortstack and Di. 

It takes him a while to realize that she actually reminds him of Alex, in a way. 

He thinks that they would get along together.

Luther, on the other hand, is annoying. 

Not only the fact that he is a total helicopter co-parent, but he’s obviously madly in love with Allison, and it’s bothering the  _ hell  _ out of Diego that he hasn’t confessed yet. I mean, it couldn’t be any more blatant. He’s pretty sure that even Pogo knows about it.

 

When he’s eighteen, he was still a head shorter than Luther, and he decided to move to Quantico. Frank did the same; he was training at the same time as Diego, but to be a criminal profiler instead of a cop. 

To Frank, it’s probably easier to get into a killer’s head rather than putting up with his siblings. 

While in the police academy, he learns how to work his way around a computer (decently) and that he’s a pretty good shot (understatement of the year, Klaus would call it).

He also meets Eudora Patch.

“Hey there, Broody,” she says the first time they met. “What are you doing? Contemplating your next breakup?” He sends a dark glare at her.

She laughs. “Well, you aren’t much of a talker, are you?”

“I normally am, but not with know-it-alls like you.”

“Oh, I’m a know-it-all?”

And that’s where they gain a friendship. Or, more like, a sidekick-ship.

 

Their first kiss is accidental. Diego bent over something to get something, and it just so happened that Eudora was there as well. When their faces meet, they rip apart from each other like a bolt of lightning had struck between them. They stare for a while, their eyes as wide as saucers, almost completely white. And they slam their lips together in a flurry of emotion, basically tearing at one another’s clothes in the middle of the mostly-vacant library. 

Needless to say, they had a fun night at Eudora’s place. 


	3. Allison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was always so restrained; but his eyes showed a fierceness that blazed along with the fire that was Luther. He’s a protector, and that’s a quality that Allison had only ever seen in her mom’s eyes. Her mom mom’s eyes. The one that held her, and whispered to her that it would be alright at three o’clock in the morning.  
> Allison found herself falling so deeply in love with Luther, that she almost didn’t notice when he kissed her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't quite know how to get into allison's head right, so that's why this took way too long to make. i'm working on klaus; lots of angst ahead.

Allison was a frog. She hopped, from placement to placement, though never really knowing which pond she was originally from. Her slimy, almost translucent skin would touch everything, infect everything with it’s poisonous secretion, her beady, stabbing eyes would haunt everyone she looked at. When in reality, she just looked like any other human being, all she would see is that same image. Slimy green frog.

No wonder her favorite color is green.

For her ninth birthday she got a pair of green roller-skates, requested, from her mom. She felt guilty that they cost nearly one hundred dollars, and they were even too big for her to fit in at the time, but her parents (the ones that kept her the longest; two years) insisted that she keep them. 

A few nights later, after her party, she was awaiting in her room. She woke blearily when her door creaked open, and she called out ‘Dad?’. He snuck in, closing the door soundly behind him, and did horrible,  _ horrible  _ things.  _ Horrible, terrible, sickening things,  _ to only a  _ nine year-old.  _

Nine years old. Basically an infant, though Allison would never imagine anyone doing  _ those  _ things to an infant. 

The adoption agency only found out when her mom found out, walking in on the act and screaming bloody murder at her husband, calling him filthy names, calling the police and kicking him out of the house. She hugged Allison, telling her it was alright, telling her that she wasn’t in danger, and pulled her shirt back over her shoulders and buttoning it back to it’s previous state. They sat on the couch, close together, a phone basically glued to her mom’s ear as she embraced the child tightly, ignoring the pounding at the door until the sirens were audible. 

The policemen questioned them. Officer Patch was good with cases like these, involving foster children, he says. 

After the interrogation, Allison and her mother were met with the terrible news that Allison would have to be housed in another location. Her mom started to cry, quiet tears rolling down her cheeks like waves; but Allison screamed. She told the Officer Patch, her mom, the policemen, probably half the whole country that she  _ needed  _ to stay. That, despite what had happened, she  _ wanted  _ to stay. She didn’t have anywhere to go, where would they take her? 

She still remembers that day, as if it were yesterday. Her mom bent down, took hold of her arms, hugged her to calm down. She cupped her face and said, “Allison, dear, you have to go somewhere else, okay? Somewhere  _ far  _ away from here, okay? So the  _ bad man  _ can’t,  _ won’t,  _ get you, okay?” She said it like she was telling it to herself, reassuring both of them. Patch looked down in sympathy. 

Allison sniffed. “Okay,” she said. Unsure, hesitant, she followed Officer Patch to the glaring lights outside, towards the cars. A blanket was wrapped around her at some point, and she somehow received a bottle of apple juice. She looked past the red-blue-white flashing lights out the window, and a strange woman was walking towards the car she was huddled in. Allison buried herself in the blanket further, gripping onto the bottle tighter, until Officer Patch said to the woman that it was okay to open the door. She shrunk when it did. 

“Your mom wanted me to give these to you, Allison,” the woman claimed. A heavy weight was landed on Allison’s lap, and she cracked her eyelids open to see the roller-skates, neon green and pink in the laces and wheels, unused and too-big for her almost-ten feet. 

She cried when she glanced back up and saw her mom in the window, the same woman talking to her, but staring at the little girl in the police car. She was holding a kleenex to her nose, drying away her tears, and smiled gratefully at Allison.

Allison smiled back.

 

When she looked in the mirror, she only saw a slimy green frog. That’s why, when Luther kept gazing at her in their homeschooling classes, distracted, she would always think there was something on her face. Allison would self-consciously try to inconspicuously rub her nose, if there happened to be a smudge on it. Or, she would sneakily check her teeth in the mirror whenever she got a chance. When Frank and Vanya saw her do it, they probably thought that it was out of vanity. And when Klaus saw her do it, well, he did it also, so it didn’t matter. 

The first day she was there, and the first time she met Luther, was around dinnertime. She had already been greeted to the butler, and she had already organized her stuff in her new room. Allison heard the jingle of the mealtime bell (she would soon have to get used to this ritzy lifestyle), and she was stiffly traveling her way down the stairs when a couple of dark blurs raced past her, shouting and pushing at each other down the stairs until they came to the floor. There, the blur that was dressed in a modest gray shirt and sweatpants, stopped to stare at her in awe, while the black blur took a little while to slow down. 

“Hey, Imma beat you- Luther, what the hell are you doing?” Assumed-to-be Luther kept staring at her, while the black-clothed blur looked back at him for a moment, looked at Allison, looked  _ back  _ at Luther, and started giggling. 

“Ohh, you have a crush on the new girl-”

“Shut up!”

Allison chuckled into her hand just as Grace called them down again for dinner. They sat down, their father at one end, whereas Luther and Diego sat on either side of him and Allison sat by Diego. Even without looking, she could feel Luther’s staring, as well as a blush starting to creep up her cheeks.

 

Besides math and reading, she got to pick a special skill that she wanted to learn about. Something physical, or musical, or theatrical.

She wanted to learn karate.

Well, not karate, Martial Arts. But, close enough, right? 

By the year, she would be able to kick, punch, hit in art-like forms that she only saw on television. She could disarm someone, then send them sprawling in the dirt with a kick to the throat, then she was able to take on Diego  _ and  _ Luther. 

But never kill. She was never,  _ ever  _ allowed to  _ kill  _ anyone with her skills. Never.

 

She, slowly but surely, fell in love with them all since the day they all met. Most of them was simple admiration. She admired Vanya’s violin playing, and Ben’s ability to take down anyone without a sword, but with a pen. She admired Frank’s talent to multitask, and Klaus’ talent to apply perfectly straight lines of eyeliner to  _ himself,  _ and she admired Diego’s resolve to find his long-lost sibling, who only she knew about in their family.

With Luther, it was something more than admiration. 

At first, she admired from afar his strength, not only physical, but mental as well. She had nearly perfect ears; she could hear what happened to them all through the walls.

For the first time in three years, she had cried out of genuine sadness, and anger.

Then, she started to stare at him more often. It was as if some magnetic force was pulling her eyes towards him. Allison couldn’t stop looking at him, but when he caught her doing so she blushed uncontrollably. What reeled her in most was his eyes. Blue, with a hint of green. Holding so much joy, so much happiness, but also so much sorrow and hopelessness at the same time. He was always so restrained; but his eyes showed a fierceness that blazed along with the fire that was  _ Luther.  _ He’s a protector, and that’s a quality that Allison had only ever seen in her mom’s eyes. Her  _ mom  _ mom’s eyes. The one that held her, and whispered to her that it would be  _ alright  _ at three o’clock in the morning.

Allison found herself falling so deeply in love with Luther, that she almost didn’t notice when he kissed her back.

 

Regretfully, she moved out of the state when she turned twenty, having stayed nearby for two years. She left everything: Dad, Grace, Pogo, Ben, Klaus (the youngest of the siblings).

Luther. He chose to go to NASA. To be an astronaut, like in his dreams.

To go to the moon.

And then, what? He’ll go back to Dad? He has nowhere else to go when he comes back to Earth. 

It frustrates her that she can’t help it. The situation that he’s in. It  _ hurts  _ her. Physically sends a jolt of pain through her chest, so many times that eventually she couldn’t even feel it anymore.

So, she distracted herself from Luther.

 

Allison met Patrick about a year before they got married, and, on her part, may not have been the smartest idea. He proposed to her, and in her rush to become a grown-up at the same time of trying to block out her childhood memories. 

The ceremony was loud, filled with Patrick’s almost never-ending family. They said their “I do”s, they kissed, everyone applauded. When she was getting into the car, labeled “Just Married!” she could’ve sworn that she saw Diego. But when she turned around to talk to Patrick about something, and then she glanced back, she didn’t see him.

Just a trick of the mind.

 

They had a daughter a year later. Claire, they both decided, would be her name. Claire Hargreeves-Hendrickson.   
It had a nice ring to it.

 

When they were both married for five years, Claire being four, Patrick filed for divorce, because Allison was apparently too “emotionally unstable” to continue raising her child. She lost custody of Claire, and moved back close to the Hargreeves’ mansion. Good thing for her, because at that moment she received the news that her dad had died. A heart attack in the middle of the night. She was inherited two million dollars, as well as a part of the house. 

Good things. 

 

She met Luther for the first time in twelve years at the funeral. It was an awkward encounter, a few mumbled words and jumbled apologies until Luther asked about her marriage.

“Uh, Patrick filed for divorce a few months ago. Oh, that’s right, you were,” she gestured to the sky, Luther nodding with an odd expression on his face. 

“I’m sorry about that, Allison. Really.” He paused. A comfortable silence entered the room, and she heard shuffling from down the hall. “And Claire?”

She looked up. “Patrick got custody.”

“Ah,” Luther sighed, nodding and looking away. The shuffling slowly came to the closed door of their father’s study, and it burst open to find Klaus in all his edgy glory. 

“Why, hello there, dear brother and sister. How has life been going? Great? Great. Mine has been as well.” He winked at Luther, who gave a disgusted scoff back, and shrunk behind the desk in the far side of the room, starting to raid the drawers. 

“Hey, no. Stop that.” Luther tried to pull Klaus out from under the desk by his armpits. But, like a cat, he shoved him off and  _ hissed  _ at him, making Allison laugh more than she should’ve. They both looked at her, and started laughing as well.

She pretended not to see the plastic bracelet on Klaus’ wrist, marking him being in rehab.

 

Yeah, she’s been in contact with Klaus. With her acting gig and all, she paid for his medication, and his rehab, and gave him two hundred dollars per month for  _ food and water  _ (but he probably used them for drugs, let’s be honest), and answered all of her mystery number calls in case it  _ was  _ him. It was pretty much always him.

 

She and Luther are laying down on the rooftop, stargazing, holding hands. Their sixteen year-old selves weaving their fingers between the other’s, perhaps feeling too much of their heartbeats. 

A meteor flew past the sky, and Luther pointed. “Shooting star,” he said, knowing full well what it was. “Make a wish.”

Allison made a wish, and gripped his hand tighter. 


	4. Klaus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No, no, no no no no, please, please, please! No, please, don’t please. No-!” He screamed, he kicked, he hit, he bit at his mom, struggling to make her let go, fighting to make her stop, to no avail. She furiously growled an inferred homophobic remark at him before throwing him into the dark, dark, dark closet and locking it. The soft click rang in his ears as he pounded the door, shrieking at the top of his lungs. The blood leaking from a split in his forehead and the blood leaking from the stab in his side was trickling down, he could feel it going down, down, down ever second it moved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after having written this chapter, getting ready to write more, and realizing that i wrote nearly four pages of just klaus, i've decided that i'm going to write more than one chapter for each of the kids. there is so much that i need to include into klaus' story that it just can't be contained!

“No, no, no no no no,  _ please,  _ please, please! No, please, don’t  _ please.  _ No-!” He screamed, he kicked, he hit, he bit at his mom, struggling to make her  _ let go,  _ fighting to make her  _ stop,  _ to no avail. She furiously growled an inferred homophobic remark at him before throwing him into the dark, dark, dark closet and locking it. The soft  _ click  _ rang in his ears as he pounded the door, shrieking at the top of his lungs. The blood leaking from a split in his forehead and the blood leaking from the stab in his side was trickling down, he could feel it going down, down, down every second it moved.

“Let me out! Please, please, let me out, mom!  _ Please.”  _ His eyes burned with tears that would  _ not  _ fall, his neck burned with anger, his lungs burned from the lack of sufficient air. He was  _ burning,  _ in the endless inky black darkness that was the closet, with only a line of light from the bottom of the door, shining white and clear across his vision. Klaus choked on his own tears, reaching around blindly for something to try to get him out with when he felt the familiar rectangular shape of his flip-phone. He had left it in there when his mom was at work, knowing all too well that he would be locked in there for the night again. He breathed out a shuddering gasp in relief, squeezing it tightly in his fingers and opening it to the cracked screen.

The blaring screen was in doubles in his quickly fading sight. On his phone was only five contacts. His parents, and three of his friends. He clicked one of his friend’s names, not caring which ever one it was. The voice that came on the other line was croaky and quiet, obviously had been sleeping at the twelve-in-the-morning it was. 

“Klaus? Why are you calling so early?”

“A-Adam, please, h-help m-me, help me get out,  _ please.”  _

 

Adam had been unaware of Klaus’ situation until he called for help, and that’s what killed him. Sure, he got Klaus semi-through the traumatizing event  _ that time,  _ and sure, he contacted the police after he called. But he didn’t help him all the other times.

And that’s what scared him. What had happened to cause his friend to not be able to call? How bad had it  _ really  _ gotten?

 

Klaus’ teeth chattered in the freezing midnight winter air. Adam held his wrist in a death-grip, his fingers’ circulation fading away slowly, but Klaus didn’t care. Adam was warm. He held the raven-haired teen close, letting him breath in his shoulder as the police invaded their house and interrogated his mom, her hands in cuffs.

“What do you think will happen to me?” Adam looked down at Klaus, his face buried into his bicep and his eyes shut tensely.

Adam squeezed his arm tighter. “I…..I don’t know,” he answered honestly. 

Klaus pulled himself up to Adam’s face and slammed their lips together, Adam making a small noise of shock before meeting the kiss back. They broke apart for a breath, their eyes gleaming, and Adam tugged on Klaus’ hair to kiss him again.

A throat cleared next to them, making their faces lurch from each other. An officer stood to their right, just coming out of the doorway.

Good news was given, bad news was given, there was a lot of crying and touching and hugging and yelling. Klaus doesn’t fully remember it, though flashes do come to him in dreams. The rage in his mother’s eyes, the sorrow in the officers’. Adam’s red, freshly kissed lips and tears on his cheeks, brown eyes glowing with understanding.

Klaus can never possibly forget him.

 

Once he’s in the police car, on the road, he knows something is wrong.

Something is going to be wrong.

They’re at an intersection, red lights shining obnoxiously on Klaus’ damaged skin, making the blood glow with new life. He looks to his right as Officer Patch is talking to him, because he knows that it is going to happen from that direction. He can feel it in his bones, a rattling deep inside of them. The lights turn green, the officer drives forward, Klaus shouts as a moving shadow is coming their way and he swerves the wheel before-

 

His heart stopped for twenty seconds. He feels lucky that he made it.

Officer Patch didn’t.

 

Klaus knew he could date anybody before he knew he was German. Like, yeah. It was almost common knowledge to him; he liked girls, but he also liked guys, and he could like gender-less people (he’s never met anyone like that). He kissed Adam, but he had also kissed Susie McGregor down the road and liked it just as well. 

He only found out that he was basically half German until he took a DNA test with Allison during one summer. Allison walked out of the room with a dazed expression on her face, her eyes blank, and the woman that had their files with her to get Klaus.

His father was most likely a German immigrant, possibly died, possibly got sent back to where he came. That’s how close his German descent was. His  _ father.  _

 

He came to realize very early on in his life that anything could be known about a person just by a single look in their eyes. Emotions, lies, secrets, outbursts, breakdowns. They were all there, up in the “windows to the soul”. 

He also came to realize, not as fast, that he was very sensitive. He was sensitive in a way that he was sensitive to his surroundings, he would hear things that weren’t there, he would see things that weren’t there. When he would walk into certain houses, like the Hargreeves’ mansion, he would feel a shiver. A chill, if you will. A wave in the air, a break in the world. He would feel several eyes on him, without ever being stared at. When Klaus touched the tarot deck that Grace had given him for his fourteenth birthday, he had a panic attack, crouching and rocking back-and-forth in the corner of his room for hours. It was like his very heartbeat was sucked out of his chest, into The Moon, into Death, into certain cards that he even  _ touched.  _ The twin wolves howling at the big disk in the sky staring back into his green orbs, the black-armored knight on his white horse ready to stab into his stomach with his sword. 

The cards were still stuffed in his second drawer, meant for pants, when he came back to the house twelve years later. 

 

The new kid was shy. 

His black pools of eyes downcast, almond-shaped and pretty against dark eyebrows and high cheekbones. When Klaus approached him the first time, he curled into his jacket and pulled up his hood introvertedly. Down to about the thousandth time they’ve seen each other, he’s smiling gladly and  _ actually  _ putting his book to the side for a change. To the two-thousandth time they’ve met, their mouths and hips are feverishly grinding against one another, tongues tangled in their teeth and their skin tingling for more contact. And, yet, even though Klaus  _ hates  _ the dark he still craves the feeling of being trapped in the not-so-new kid’s black eyes. Afterwards, when they’ve finished, lying on the bed tiredly and panting out smoky breaths from Klaus’ cigarette, they cuddle for what feels like forever, never being able to go to sleep but getting enough peace from their subtle touches. 

There’s something very intimate about making love. Sex, when the two people between it truly love and know each other. After it happens, there’s a serious bond there, like  _ Yeah, I had sex with Ben. It means something. It means a  _ **_lot,_ ** _ actually.  _ It’s taboo, when it’s your brother, but they were never brothers. Sure, Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopted them. Their not technically related, so, what’s the harm in it, Klaus thinks. 

Klaus also thinks he loves Ben, but he isn’t totally sure about that.

 

_ “Ah, ah, ah, ah, Ben, oh god, Ben! Fuck!” He presses the pillow to his throbbing privates, gasping out his brother’s name in sync with the thrusts. He’s so close, so close to ruining the pillowcase, his too-short shorts (in the eyes of Father), when someone barges into his room without warning.  _

_ He doesn’t have a very good fight or flight reflex, despite whatever has happened in his life. He freezes, the pillow pinned between his sweaty thighs and his hand posed over it, the other gripping onto his mouth. _

_ Until he hears the voice, he doesn’t relax. _

_ “Oh, Klaus,” Ben sighs, his eyes darkening the slight change they do in situations like these. Klaus lets go of his mouth and starts to hump the pillow with renewed vigor, chasing for his release to spite his lover. His hips pump like his heartbeat, a quick staccato. He barely hears the door shutting, but he can’t mind anything in his horny haze.  _

_ He finishes with a drawn-out gasp, wetting his boxer-briefs and his jean shorts and the fabric of the pillowcase, grinding against it slowly as he’s basking in the afterglow. _

_ A hand lightly grazes his shoulder and turns him to lay straight on his back on the bed instead of curled around the pillow. Ben looms over him, crawling on top of him and leaning in to kiss him briefly before touching their clothed crotches together and breathing against the shell of Klaus’ ear. _

_ “You’re so beautiful like this, so,” he says, trailing his fingers lightly down Klaus’ body and making him shiver in the anticipation. “So pretty like this. _

_ That was the first time anyone called Klaus beautiful. Pretty.  _

_ He likes to be pretty, he decided. _

  
  


_ “Dirty invert!” _

_ “Faggot!” _

_ “Filthy whore!” _

Is echoing in his brain as he outlines his eyes meticulously with eyeliner, brushing strokes of eye-shadow, dusting his face lightly with Grace’s rouge and glossing his lips with her lipstick. Making something from nothing is what he’s good at. 

Making pretty what isn’t is all that he’s good at, nowadays. 

After he’s done applying the red to his pouted lips, he puckers them and slides them together to make it evenly distributed. Klaus adjusts the lacy bra under his tight-ass, short-enough-to-be-slutty button-up shirt he stole from Allison, tied into a knot as his waist. The lingerie around his hips tightly pack his dick to almost his asshole, and his leather jeans aren’t helping the fact, but he ignores the discomfort and throws on a hoodie to hide his outfit the best he can.

He walks down the stairs as quietly as he can manage, creeping down the handle, light on his heels. He gets to the door with a hand on the door-knob when the voice comes.

“You know, you don’t have to do this.” Vanya leans on the wall, silent and unassuming to the eye. Her brown gaze is frighteningly all-knowing, which is why Klaus never meets it. 

“Don’t think it’s any of your business what  _ I  _ do with my body, Van.”

Her eyes narrow. She sighs dejectedly, turns around and takes a few steps before stopping a moment. She turns her head ninety degrees. “You don’t have to be a dick about it, Klaus.” She walks up the stairs and veers to her room, leaving Klaus to his activities.

He looks back to where she went, and walked out of the door. 

 


	5. Franklyn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tilted his head to admire Six better. “I don’t know, you seem like a Dolores to me.”  
> Six--Dolores smiled. “I like that. Can I keep it?”  
> “Totally.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy lordy.  
> this was a doosie to write.   
> i was trying to incorporate the importance of him not having a name in the show, but also have a reason for him being named frank (which is totally going to happen. i can feel it in my balls), so, yeah.

_ “Testing subject Number Five, please raise your right hand.”  _ Five did as he was told.

_ “Testing subject Number Five, please sit.”  _ Five did as he was told.

_ “Testing subject Number Five, state your status.”  _ Five did as he was told.

For as long as he could remember, Five was Five. Number Five. Merely a number. Merely a cog in a grand machine, as The Handler told him. The stark-blond woman had piercing green eyes, ones that stared directly into his without hesitance. Knives, spikes, whatever was sharp in the world, that would describe her sharp, menacing glares.

_ “Testing subject Number Five, report to the mealtime area with the others.”  _ He did as he was told, sliding off of his bed and opening the door, unlocked for the last time that day before he would be locked in it again for the night. 

He lined up against the wall outside the entrance to his cell, along with the other two-hundred something test subjects, all skinny and frail from constant lack of food. This was one of the only times that they got anything to eat, and it wasn’t much. The seemingly never-ending hallway of homeless-teens-turned-guinea-pigs was white, white on white on white except for the shadows of the children. White uniforms, white walls, white, pale skin with thin, breakable limbs and hollowed-out eyes. 

Five made eye contact with Six, who stood across the hall from him, her eyebrows scrunched up with her hair falling into her face. The brunette locks were greasy and thin, unkempt and messy from under-treatment, but had been shaved a few days ago from it being in the way for too long. Her face was as pale as Five’s, her frame twice as skinny from taking  _ his  _ punishments too often, but she was still exceedingly attractive. To Five, at least.

“They’re early,” she mouthed, and Five nodded, looking to his left at the unopened door. The Handler would come out any second now, perhaps to feed them? Or, to take them? 

The metal door shot open with a bang, shocking the children into jumping about ten feet in the air, and a woman stepped out with three body guards around her. The Handler’s whipping stick tapped the ground with a loud  _ whack,  _ a warning to subjects who disobeyed. She took slow, methodical steps down the endless hallway, poking gazes at certain teens on the way. Number Twelve gulped when they met eye contact, and it had been a little too loud. 

The Handler paused, and so did the guards. They turned around in sync to face Twelve, who went unnervingly pale in the face in the last five seconds.

Five is pretty sure that he’s not the only one that gasped when he was stabbed with one fluid motion through the heart. Twelve’s eyes widened, blood poured out of his mouth, and he dropped like a deadweight to the floor when the sharp-ended whippng stick was pulled out of his  _ body  _ with a sickening  _ pop. _

The Handler continued her merry way.

 

When Five was rescued from The Commission, a black market human trafficking company, turns out, he got to choose his name since he didn’t remember the one his mother had given him thirteen years ago.

He chose Franklyn. Franklyn, starting with F, like Five. Franklyn, meaning “Free Man”. Franklyn with a Y, not an I.

Franklyn was a revolution for him.

So was, frankly (no pun intended), making friends with anyone other than Six.

 

It was mealtime. They were in the plain white cafeteria, sitting in perfect rows and columns, facing forward at the educational video that they showed every Friday for them to know it is Friday. Their meal; the regular bread and cheese and carrot sticks.

Five didn’t want to eat carrot sticks anymore, not after what happened last week. One of the subjects stuffed too many of the mini carrots into his mouth and purposefully choked on them, writhing around and collapsing on the floor. He kept uncontrollably inhaling the vegetables crowding his mouth, and he started coughing blood as he convulsed on the porcelain tile and the guards closed in on the innocent boy.

Five got an unlucky front row seat, as the boy was Number Four, sitting right next to him in the chairs sitting right up to the front of the room.

What haunted him most from that day was that he only knew the boy by his number, not his name. And the almost….grateful look in his eyes as he was suffocating on his own blood crawling up his throat.

 

“Aye, Frankie boy!” Klaus pounced onto the bed, shaking the entire room with him and startling Frank from his thought process. 

“Klaus,” he said exasperatedly. “I told you  _ not  _ to call me that.”

“And that is why, my friend, I will continue to call you that!” 

Klaus always had such a boisterous voice, carrying itself through the house and vibrating the other side of the world like an earthquake. Vanya had a much more soothing voice, much like her violin, melodic and flowing. One that could help him sleep.

Not that he loses sleep thinking about that.

 

“Hey there, Five.” Six slithered up to him, much like a cat, quiet and sly in her movements. The library was silent, her voice even more so.

“Hey, Six.” She flinched slightly at the sound of her “name”, but Five tried to ignore it and mask his oncoming blush.

She reached to take locked-up book from the white bookshelf. “Have you ever wanted a  _ real  _ name?” 

Five glanced away from his book and shut it sluggishly. His eyebrows twitched. “Why?”

Six shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought it would be nice, is all.” Five looked at her in understanding, and suddenly got a flash of his mother as he gazed at Six. They look so alike, from what he remembers of his mom; once having brown hair, having liquid blue eyes. Fair skin and perfect cheekbones to match a perfect jawline. 

His mom’s name was Dolores.

He tilted his head to admire Six better. “I don’t know, you seem like a Dolores to me.”

Six--Dolores smiled. “I like that. Can I keep it?”

“Totally.”

 

Luther had boxing, and Diego had knife-throwing. Allison, her martial arts, Klaus, his painting.

Frank? He wanted to  _ run. _

He wanted to run. Run, run,  _ run  _ as fast and as far as he can without stopping, so he won’t be taken by anyone,  _ ever  _ again. He wanted to become a blur to the eyes of his enemies, just a flash against the light. Almost a mirage compared to his surroundings. 

 

Ten, twenty, thirty, seventy kids line up to climb into the school bus. The damp, humid leather clung onto his and Dolores’ skin, sweat evaporating and clinging onto the air, onto other people. The kids kept coming and coming, filtering into the matchbox of the vehicle and being packed into threes in a seat like anchovies in a tin box. They very nearly pushed all the children in the bus until several people in SWAT vests started prowling, a few of the kids noticing them and the SWAT team putting a finger over their mouths to get them to hush.

“FBI, hands up!” More officers, now in FBI vests, crouching and moving towards The Handler cautiously, holding guns. 

The next thing he knew, Five was curling up in a ball under his sweaty leather seat while shots rang out through the garage, gunshots and screaming kids and creaking metal overcoming his senses until he couldn’t breath,  _ he couldn’t breath oh my god I can’t breath- _

“Five!”

 

“Frank? Frank! Keep breathing, Frank, please, just breath for me, okay?” Vanya was standing over him, settling him down on his bed manually and trying to get him to do breathing exercises.

“What?” He gasped out, clutching onto Vanya’s arm tightly and  _ trying,  _ he really is, he’s  _ trying  _ breath. He  _ can’t,  _ he can’t breath someone help  _ please. _

It all came in a rush, Vanya touching his cheek lightly, like a feather, sent him into a wall of fresh air and he coughed when enough of it hit his lungs. Frank closed his eyes and shook his head, bringing his knees to his chin and pushing Vanya away.

“Frank, I can’t leave you alone-”

“Just, go, Vanya! Just, just, just,” he shuddered, shutting down and hugging himself tighter and tighter until Vanya was almost sure that he would  _ squeeze  _ the oxygen from his chest himself. “Just, just,  _ please,  _ go away, just go  _ away.  _ Leave me alone, please.” He presses two fingers to his temple, drilling them into his head and crushing his eyes shut.

Vanya gave one last glance of concern and walked off, careful to close the door on her way out, leaving a very panicked and damaged Frank alone in his too dark, too tight, too  _ much,  _ bedroom to curl up beneath his sheets and cry. 


	6. Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What also distracted him from the nightmares was writing. He would write, write until his whole story was out in a few journals, until his hand cramped and he couldn’t let go of his pencil from the creaking pain in it. After he finished, he would present the story to Klaus and let him read it in another room while Ben was in the other crying his eyes and lungs out until they burned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *drops this*  
> whoops, guess i just broke mine and your hearts with all of this unexpected angst. unexpected, even to me!

Ben’s first home isn’t one that he remembers all too much. 

The faint memories that he  _ does  _ have are very few. The distant smell of freshly baked chocolate-chip peanut-butter cookies, the gentle feel of the cloth securely swaddling him in the beginning of the night. Careful touches from calloused fingers and scarred hands from what was assumed to be his father at the time, and the careful touches of soft, smooth, untouched hands from what was assumed to be his mother. Her clear, ocean eyes and his deep brown ones. 

He thinks they were his  _ real  _ parents, but he can’t know for sure. 

He was ripped away from them savagely. In the fit of crying he was in, he barely saw their faces, and if he did, he doesn’t recall the event. His pudgy baby hands waving in the air for his mom and dad, his home. 

He remembers the plane, riding on it to America, looking out of the window with his curious onyx eyes, scraping every detail like the observant two year-old he was at the time. 

His second home, however, he does remember. 

He quite frequently has nightmares of the things that took place in there, in fact.

 

“Hey, boy.” Ben’s head shot up, his brain shaking and causing him to have a headache from the sudden movement. “Put that book away and get Mom and Dad a drink, will ya?”

Ben complied, standing up with twig limbs and needle fingers. His sister, who was currently locked in the basement for the night, would usually do this task. But she had a tongue as sharp as their unnaturally protruding bones from their bodies.

The fridge smelled disgusting. Grease and mold and rotten milk infested the entire area of the kitchen, but Ben held his nose and grabbed two of the foreign brown bottles in the corner of the filthy refrigerator.

The carpet, beige and perfectly clean unlike the kitchen, hid the unspeakable horrors of the level below the first. The  _ basement.  _

They’re not allowed to go under there unless they’re in trouble. 

 

“Daddy?” Four year-old Benjamin Hudson walked out of his room in the middle of the night, awoken by a strange noise akin to a--coyote? Some mountain animal that made loud sounds, perhaps. 

His mom and dad were carrying a few small bags down to the basement, making a ruckus as they accidentally hit the load against the walls. A few of his siblings woke up too, wiping their eyes with fisted up hands in the confused, drowsy haze of being woken up  _ in the middle of the night.  _

His dad turned around quickly, a shocked, almost scared expression on his face that didn’t match well with his too-square jaw and his too-small eyes.

“Boy, what are you doing awake?” His voice boomed throughout the thin-walled house, probably waking up half of the neighborhood as well as the remaining kids asleep. All six of them, standing in the hallway and staring at the big man and frail woman.

Their mother had a mousy, thin-set face with unflattering high cheekbones. Her thin hair was always tied into a painfully tight bun, and it’s no different tonight. 

“I--there was a noise. I didn’t know what to do.” Mother rolled her eyes and stomped her foot, making the gesture towards their father. The sack in her hands shook in her grasp, dripping a mucky brown liquid all over the hardwood flooring. Dad looked at Mom, and then looked at the children with an inquisitive, almost playful gleam in his eye.

“Hey, Benny boy,” he leaned down to the Asian toddler, who was still confused of the whole incident. He stared warily at the dripping stuff from the bag. “Do you wanna go downstairs with us? We might need some help, and,” he looked back at his wife. “We might need a person to watch.” Her eyes widened knowingly, and she picked up a bigger sack, this time a pillowcase stained with streaks of red, and started waltzing down the steps to the cellar.

Ben paused. “O…..kay,” he said, and was forced to hold another bag that was pushed at him. It was squishy and filled with what felt like water and it made Ben feel  _ sick  _ for some reason. 

“Alright there, sport. Come with me. The rest of you,” he pointed to the other five kids, shivering in their statue-like states. “Stay up here.”

 

It took a very, very long time in his life to know that the sound that woke him up that night wasn’t a yowling forest animal, but it was a human scream from the basement.

 

“Heya, Benny boy!” Klaus knocked on the door-frame, Ben flinching at the harmless nickname. Klaus paused and frowned at the unconscious action. “What’s wrong?”

“Please,  _ please  _ don’t call me that, Klaus.  _ Please.”  _

The other nodded, and Ben put his book down next to him to read more of later. 

 

The first time he saw a body, he was four, and had went down to the basement That One Night. There was a person; crowding in the corner like a wounded animal, a gag over her mouth and her head bleeding from a cut near her hairline. Her right eye was bruised and her ankle was turned so far that it was aligned with the floor. She was scared, and was trying to scream through the gag pinned between her tight jaws.

The bags, however, held several body parts, crudely sawed off of a body and bleeding through the brown sacks with thick, gooey secretion. The hand was clutched around air, and the leg was stiff, and the severed fingers pointed at  _ Ben  _ as if he was the one to blame.

 

Once he got shown the bodies, he was more involved in the...murderous activities that his parents participated in. Cruel cutting of limbs and blood splattering on the walls around him was all that he remembered in his time there. It was a haze of an innocent boy driven to murder by his  _ parents.  _

_ He was only a kid. _

Once he would start initiating the murders, the meetings in the middle of the night would happen more often and at different, odd times. They would start to be on  every Tuesday when it was only an every other Wednesday that it would happen, like a family treat. A morbid, violent family treat. 

This part of the murders is that gave him the most plagued dreams.

When the latest victim would be brought into his room, they would be  _ alive  _ for a change. The gag would be cut off and the ties around their wrists and legs would be untied. 

They could do whatever they wanted with him.

They were commanded to crawl on top of him, to hold him, to kiss him and lick him and unzip his pants to touch him and he could see and feel the tears from their eyes as they were literally whipped into shape as they  _ raped him- _

 

Klaus distracts him from the nightmares. His touch isn’t like the victims’. They were always cold,  _ freezing,  _ and clammy from nerves shooting through their adrenaline-rushed systems. They were always hesitant and forced and jerky from all of the whips and the stabs and the electrocution. 

_ When his parents shocked them it shocked him too.  _

_ Not that he cared. _

Klaus’ hands are sure as they slide down his body. They’re warm and soft and careful when they go downwards, to his belly-button and to the waist of his pants. They were slow and accurate, slipping into him and making him come from  _ enjoyment _ for a change instead of it being forced out of him from  _ those times. _

Klaus was warm and comforting and he  _ understood. _

 

What also distracted him from the nightmares was writing. He would write, write until his whole story was out in a few journals, until his hand cramped and he couldn’t let go of his pencil from the creaking pain in it. After he finished, he would present the story to Klaus and let him read it in another room while Ben was in the other crying his eyes and lungs out until they burned. 

 

“Hey, Benji? Are you okay? Should I go get someone-”

“No,” Ben gasped out, prying his hands from the toilet seat and flushing it. His thighs quivered as he stood up and unlocked the door for Klaus to come in. “No, no. Just you, please.”

He came in slowly, his eyes cautious and closed off and his hands stuck awkwardly in his pockets. His mouth was slightly upturned into an almost mock of a smile, turning into a sympathetic grimace.

“Hey, Ben.” They looked at one another, both on edge, Ben with hickeys circling his neck and Klaus with red, puckered lips and  _ god, why did Ben have to freak out during sex? _

“Hey.” 

“So,” Klaus glanced around the bathroom. “You wanna talk about it?”

The Asian boy rubbed his forearm distractedly, meeting his eyes and shaking his head lightly. “I’d prefer not to.”

Klaus truly,  _ really  _ smiled, and held his arms out for a hug. “Do you feel like cuddling the fuck out for a while?”

Ben nodded and fell into Klaus’ warm, comforting, understanding embrace of hands carding through his hair and he clutched onto Klaus’ skinny waist and he really, really wanted to sleep. Careful touches with soft, untouched fingers and bright green ocean eyes.

He dozed off and got a few hours of sleep that day.


	7. Vanya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Vanya?  
> She was deported from Russia when she was eight, with no explanation as to what happened to her in an almost five-year coma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't quite remember what the wooden ballerina that leonard gave vanya had looked like, so i just wrote it in like how i thought it would've looked.  
> also, vanya and klaus bonding times.

And Vanya?

She was deported from Russia when she was eight, with no explanation as to what happened to her in an almost five-year coma.

Of course, when she arrived in America, she had no idea where she was, and she could only speak a language that was very rarely spoken in the US. Everything was foreign; the hospital, the house she was raised in, the police officer perched always at her doorstep and the maid always at her side. The restaurants and the words and the people was very new to her.

And, worst of all, she didn’t even know who  _ she herself  _ was. All that she knew, was that her name was Vanya, she was thirteen years-old, she was Russian, and that the maid and the officer weren’t her parents.

 

She stood, unsure, up in the front of the door to the Hargreeves’ Mansion, holding a suitcase and the pet carrier of her cat with her.

Her maid, Alla, compared to her, a tree, was glued to her side and holding her violin and another suitcase. The glass doors with an umbrella emblem on them peeling open to reveal a tall, thin, with light resemblance of Alla, butler. He held his hand out to wave it towards her luggage.

“Would you like me to take your luggage inside, Miss Vanya?” His accent was unusual, one that she wasn’t used to, as she stayed around people with the rough, mouthy voice of her motherland.

Alla, tongueless in the result of an accident, set the carried items in her hand to the ground as Vanya did the same. They hugged comfortingly, and in the intimate moment, the butler at the door backed away slightly.

“Be trustful,  _ мое солнце,  _ but be vigilant,” she whispered in the young woman’s ear, rubbing her back and pushing her head into the crevice of her dipping shoulder. Alla squeezed onto her one last time.

Vanya squeezed right back.

 

On one day in her fifteen year-old life, Vanya has decided that she wasn’t squeamish. 

She also decided that she made too many relationships too easily. 

This day was one of many nights that she stayed in the Hargreeves’ Mansion, a structure that she found both familiar and unnerving. Unsettling. Dark and looming, it stood on an unassuming street in an unassuming town, nothing ever occurring on the outside. The gates and the doors having a strange foreshadowing umbrella on the front, and the man of the house forcing his children to stand in an organized pattern every first day of July for a  _ very long time  _ for painted portraits. 

But, on the inside, well. 

Both dreams and nightmares came in flashes.

She was inching her way down the hall in the middle of the night--she had to go to the bathroom--and when she neared the door to her destination, two things happened:

One: She realized it was closed, and the light was on.

Two: She heard an ominous  _ thump,  _ and found out it was unlocked.

Her first instinct was to wake someone up. She barely knew these people, despite having stayed with them since  _ two years ago,  _ and they all seemed to have a more special of a bond than what she ever had with anybody.

That she knew of.

Sure, she talked with Allison a few times, and snatched Klaus’ drugs away from him in times that he  _ didn’t need drugs,  _ and disagreed with Luther in family arguments, therefore causing more of a family feud (no pun intended). But it’s not like they ever  _ liked  _ her. Or  _ trusted  _ her.

But that didn’t stop her from going against her natural fight-or-flight reflex and opening the door.

She screamed. 

An awful, bloodcurdling shriek that woke the very  _ soul  _ of the house up, and one that caused everyone to run down to the bathroom to find Vanya laying on the floor in a very uncomfortable position cradling Ben in her grasp. 

Vanya screamed and cried as foamy spit dribbled out of her brother’s mouth, a needle jabbed so far into the vein in his arm that it bled endlessly down until it reached the floor with an on-and-off  _ drip, drip, drip.  _ His eyes, glassy and sightless as they pointed towards Vanya, chilling her to the bone with dread.

“Help! Klaus, Frank, Allison, somebody! Help!” 

_ “Help,”  _ she looked down to see Ben, grabbing at her arm and opening his mouth soundlessly. “Klaus, help, Klaus.”

She got the message, and when her siblings reached the bathroom entrance, she only let in Klaus.

 

As soon as Vanya had moved to the mansion, she instantly asked for a private place to play her violin. She was attached to the garden as soon as Pogo had shown it to her.

Well, it didn’t really start out as a garden. She had been shown the courtyard, and asked if she could  _ start  _ a garden. Soon enough, scarlet roses and sunset marigolds and delicate nasturtiums and multicolored zinnias were invading the corner of the yard farthest from the door.

Vanya would bring a music stand carrying her sheets of music with her violin and set in inside the gazebo to play for most of the day.

Sometimes, the others would join her. Ben, Allison, Frank, perhaps Diego or Klaus on rare occasions. 

 

Klaus sat on the bench nearby, his legs crossed haphazardly and a blunt smoking from his loose lips, his bright eyes traveling their way through the tangled nest of flowers onto Vanya’s erect frame, her movements gliding along with the bow and the gradual, vibrating sounds against the strings. Her fingers were much like Klaus’ own; long, thin, pale. But were calloused and smooth whereas they were scarred and crooked on the junkie’s damaged palms. He always admired her way with music. He never had that gift, even with his painting. Vanya could ease emotions into her artwork, and Klaus just, didn’t have that. 

Not that he didn’t have feelings, no, he had  _ plenty  _ of those. Vanya, and dear ol’ Reggie, and probably the others could see it clearly. The growing-out of his hair and the spike of make-up usage in a fit of rebellion and the drug use in coping with his past. It was all linked to these useless things called emotions,  _ feelings. _

Klaus almost despised them more than he did his mom. More than he does their dad.

“You’re good at that, Van.” She paused, lowering her instrument and looking over at the dark-haired teen on the bench.

“Good at what?”

Klaus scoffed. “I don’t know. Lots of things. Playing the violin? Being a good person? Being a good friend? The list can go on.” He brought himself to his feet and started waltzing over to the violinist, taking a drag and blowing smoke from his mouth in one flowing movement like a magnificent, unearthly beast. His hair waving along with the currents of wind behind his head, grown to merely his shoulders. 

Vanya often found hidden beauty in broken things.

She chuckled as Klaus reached his destination, leaning his crossed hands over the windowless edge of the gazebo and grinning widely at her rare laugh. “Sure enough. Though, I doubt that I’m a good friend.” He frowned slightly, his eyebrows twitching as he took another smoke-filled breath from the weed and breathing it out in Vanya’s direction.

“I doubt that you’re right on that, Miss Vanya Hargreeves.”

He took the blunt and nudged the damp end of it to her lips, making her open them and take a similar smoke-filled breath. Vanya choked, and Klaus took it back with a dry laugh.

“That happened my first time, too.” She smiled at Klaus, the smoke dispersing into the air with a wave of her hand.

 

The fading  _ ding  _ of the bells at the door followed her as she stepped inside the woodworking shop.  _ Peabody & Son Woodwork.  _ It had just opened the day before, and Vanya was as curious as she ever was about what was in it. Carved figures of cats and dogs and ducks and farmers and cowboys and little village women trailed behind her as well, staring at her with peculiar, masked moods for eyes. 

“Hello there, little lady,” a man with a heavy country accent walked towards her, warm, nice brown eyes with a blue flannel, straining against a bulging belly. “What can I do for ya today?”

Vanya smiled a friendly smile and shrugged. “I’m not looking for anything in particular. I just saw that this shop was new, and I wanted to check it out. Thanks for asking, though.” He smiled warmly at her.

“Well, just ask if you need anythin’. My son,” he pointed to the back, to a sectioned-off room. Probably meant for carving. “He’s always back there if you need to ask.” She nodded. The man--Mr. Peabody--closed himself into another back room and locked the door behind him. 

Vanya continued to look around the workshop, the late afternoon sunlight laying a golden sheen on the carved creations. A certain carving caught her eye; a ballerina, mid spin, her tutu fanned around her like a peacock, and her back curved elegantly. Her eyes seemed to be shut in concentration, or perseverance, or both. Vanya was so infatuated in her image that she didn’t hear the footsteps approaching her.

“She’s one of mine.” Vanya probably shot ten feet up in the air from the quiet voice coming from behind her suddenly.

“Christ!” 

“Oh, sorry!” The man hunched over timidly, shrinking from scaring Vanya. She let out a breath that could’ve been a laugh or a sigh. 

“No, no, it’s okay.” They both laughed nervously.

After some time of silence, the person that spoke was, unexpectedly, the man.

“I’m Leonard, by the way. Leonard Peabody.” He held out his hand. His eyes twinkled with little confidence.

Vanya smiled slightly. “Vanya Hargreeves.” She took his hand.

  
  
  



End file.
